Alan Lightman might be the only writer who can dance through not just one but seven universes in
a book not much larger than a human hand.

In the seven deceptively weightless essays of
The Accidental Universe, the novelist and theoretical physicist touches on mortality,
symmetry, string theory, religion, dark energy, rationality, scientific history and a range of the
unquestioned assumptions humans make “in this baffling and temporary existence, trapped as we are
within our three pounds of neurons.”

The essays, some of which have been published previously, follow a form for their titles:
The Gargantuan Universe,
The Disembodied Universe,
The Spiritual Universe, and so on.

The title essay plays with the question of what the “multiverse” — the now commonly accepted, at
least among physicists, notion that our universe is one of what Lightman calls “zillions of
universes” — does to our understanding of just how inevitable our world’s “natural laws” actually
are.

In
The Temporary Universe, Lightman considers the slow slide toward entropy, and in
The Symmetrical Universe, he examines why honeycombs are constructed of hexagonal cells,
how symmetry works to minimize energy, and why humans are attracted to symmetry — and to its
opposite.

Some of the essays are more original than others:
The Disembodied Universe devolves from a meditation on the limits of human knowledge to a
grumble on kids and their texting, and
The Spiritual Universe has little new to say about the fraught relationship between
science and religion.

But even the lesser essays have a personal touch and intriguing prose style that make them worth
reading. When Lightman talks about theoretical physics, he grounds it in a portrait of an M.I.T.
professor who “chain-drinks Diet Cokes” and who a few years ago won a contest sponsored by
TheBoston Globe for the messiest office in the city.

Examples from his own life are equally homely: When he thinks about the human longing for
immortality, it brings to mind his own unhappiness at abandoning “my favorite shoes, a pair of
copper-colored wingtips that I purchased 30 years ago to wear at a friend’s graduation.”

Considering the spiritual universe, he recalls a momentary encounter with two baby ospreys near
his summer home in Maine.

Above all, Lightman has an appealing humility and affection for the mysterious, and an even more
attractive compassion for humans, with their short lives and big questions.